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BBC pushes its new iPlayer Radio site, blocks Google from indexing current site

January 8, 2013 - 6:38 pm GMT

It looks like the BBC has started the process of migrating users away from its current on demand Radio website towards its new one; having blocked search engines from accessing the current iPlayer Radio website using its robots.txt file.

The BBC says that users who come to its iPlayer site tend to consume video/TV content on demand but listen to radio content live.

Describing the change as a “deliberately bold move to radical simplicity” the BBC says that the new site has been designed to address this differences in consumption habits and to make it easier for users to listen live radio content while still having access to on demand audio content.

And it seems to be working, according to the corporation the new site, since October, has broken the corporation’s records for online listening.

“BBC iPlayer Radio across all platforms now reaches around 6 million UK unique browsers per week, breaking all previous records, which is 30% up compared to October 2011. We are seeing a significant increase (almost one fifth, 18%) in traffic to the product homepage, which receives over a million unique browsers per week, and which in turn is sending higher numbers of people to the individual station sites: Radio 2 saw a 31% increase between September and November, whilst Radio 4 saw a 9% increase.”

So it’s no wonder that they’re eager to move users away from the current site towards the new one.